The Five Value Propositions Of Marketing

In a recent discussion with Mike Marcellin, CMO of Juniper Networks, an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, we talked about the need for marketers to communicate their value more effectively. As part of this, Marcellin laid out his five value propositions. What follows are Marcellin’s views on how marketers can better communicate the unique value created.

Kimberly Whitler: You suggest that marketers need to create value and then communicate it effectively internally (as well as externally) to help ensure marketing drives greater enterprise-wide impact. Can you share an example?

Mike Marcellin: As an example, I took over as CMO in March 2015 and did the typical 90-day assessment. I then had a conversation with the CEO and CFO. As part of this conversation, I laid out my assessment, opportunities, strategies, and plans. As you can imagine, the CEO and CFO expected that I would ask for more money to drive greater impact. I did not. In my opinion, we had not earned the right to ask for more money because I did not yet have any ROI insight on the investment the company had already made and the value we had created. As part of my plan, I intended to create the reporting mechanisms that would enable us to become more introspective about the merits (or lack thereof) of what we had been doing. I know that this seems a little like “inside baseball” talk, but it’s critical that we articulate our value back to the business so I can then have a reasonable discussion about investment.

Whitler: So what are the key distinguishing factors of marketing — or as you like to call them — the Five Value Propositions?

Marcellin: There are five different value propositions marketing has on our business.

1. Marketing can create more value by communicating an outside-in point of view: Even though in B2B you have front-line sellers who have a direct view of customer requirements, that view is usually limited to their individual customer or account deck. Marketing can be the broad outside-in point of view about the customer and the industry. We conduct quarterly reviews. In the past, marketing put up a bunch of slides on all of our activities. Now, we are much more results focused and we actually start with an insight sections that provides invaluable trending or emerging insights that the business needs to be aware of. Now, marketing is a source of valuable outside-in data and information.

2. Marketing has the opportunity to define the unique truth about the company and how it is differentiated. Marketing needs to fully understand who we are on the inside and then accurately reflect that on the outside. When I took over this role, I took the team through this introspective exercise to really understand who we are. We landed on the notion that the fundamental DNA of the company is that we challenge the status quo. The impetus for the company when we were founded 20 years ago was a fundamental rethinking of what networks meant to a company. We challenge ourselves, our customers, and the industry. It’s how we work internally and how we now represent ourselves outside.

3. Marketing needs to be the expert communicators of the value we have created — in a new world with a lot of granularity regarding segmentation. This is about micro segmentation. We can better hone our understanding of more slivers of a segmentation model to get much more targeted with our messaging. And given how hyper-educated our buyers now are, this is critical to meet them where they are in the buying process.

4. Creating compelling stories. This has always been the job of marketers. I invested an entire day at our recent global marketing summit to the art of storytelling. In addition to storytelling to the market outside, this ability to architect a compelling narrative also can help the marketer to internally gain buy-in and support of our key initiatives. Stories are great for influencing. If you asked our CEO today what is the primary job of marketing, he’d say to tell compelling stories about our company to the market to help drive preference and growth.

5. Have a vision for the business and play a key strategic role. If we aren’t helping the company look around corners, then we aren’t fully at the strategic or value-creating table as it relates to the CEO and Board. We should be as capable as anybody in helping to guide the strategy of the company.

Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler, @mmarcellin

I am a former General Manager and CMO who has worked in the U.S. and overseas for companies in a variety of industries, including P&G, PetSmart, and David’s Bridal. After nearly 20 years in industry, I am currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia's D...